Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe First published in 1959 (One of the first African novels written in English to receive global critical acclaim) Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things Fall Apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. --W. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming" CHAPTER ONE Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honour to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat. Amalinze was the great wrestler who for seven years was unbeaten, from Umuofia to Mbaino. He was called the Cat because his back would never touch the earth. It was this man that Okonkwo threw in a fight which the old men agreed was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights. The drums beat and the flutes sang and the spectators held their breath. Amalinze was a wily craftsman, but Okonkwo was as slippery as a fish in water. Every nerve and every muscle stood out on their arms, on their backs and their thighs, and one almost heard them stretching to breaking point. In the end Okonkwo threw the Cat. That was many years ago, twenty years or more, and during this time Okonkwo's fame had grown like a bush-fire in the harmattan. He was tall and huge, and his bushy eyebrows and wide nose gave him a very severe look. He breathed heavily, and it was said that, when he slept, his wives and children in their houses could hear him breathe. When he walked, his heels hardly touched the ground and he seemed to walk on springs, as if he was going to pounce on somebody. And he did pounce on people quite often. He had a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fists. He had no patience with unsuccessful men. He had had no patience with his father. Unoka, for that was his father's name, had died ten years ago. In his day he was lazy and improvident and was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow. If any money came his way, and it seldom did, he immediately bought gourds of palm-wine, called round his neighbours and made merry. He always said that whenever he saw a dead man's mouth he saw the folly of not eating what one had in one's lifetime. Unoka was, of course, a debtor, and he owed every neighbour some money, from a few cowries to quite substantial amounts. He was tall but very thin and had a slight stoop. He wore a haggard and mournful look except when he was drinking or playing on his flute. He was very good on his flute, and his happiest moments were the two or three moons after the harvest when the village musicians brought down their instruments, hung above the fireplace. Unoka would play with them, his face beaming with blessedness and peace. S.

1. Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe
First published in 1959
(One of the first African novels written in English to receive
global critical acclaim)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things Fall Apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
--W. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"

2. CHAPTER ONE
Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even
beyond. His fame rested
on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he
had brought honour to
his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat. Amalinze was the
great wrestler who for seven
years was unbeaten, from Umuofia to Mbaino. He was called the
Cat because his back

3. would never touch the earth. It was this man that Okonkwo
threw in a fight which the old
men agreed was one of the fiercest since the founder of their
town engaged a spirit of the
wild for seven days and seven nights.
The drums beat and the flutes sang and the spectators held their
breath. Amalinze
was a wily craftsman, but Okonkwo was as slippery as a fish in
water. Every nerve and
every muscle stood out on their arms, on their backs and their
thighs, and one almost
heard them stretching to breaking point. In the end Okonkwo
threw the Cat.
That was many years ago, twenty years or more, and during this
time Okonkwo's
fame had grown like a bush-fire in the harmattan. He was tall
and huge, and his bushy
eyebrows and wide nose gave him a very severe look. He
breathed heavily, and it was
said that, when he slept, his wives and children in their houses
could hear him breathe.
When he walked, his heels hardly touched the ground and he
seemed to walk on springs,

4. as if he was going to pounce on somebody. And he did pounce
on people quite often. He
had a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and could not
get his words out quickly
enough, he would use his fists. He had no patience with
unsuccessful men. He had had no
patience with his father.
Unoka, for that was his father's name, had died ten years ago.
In his day he was
lazy and improvident and was quite incapable of thinking about
tomorrow. If any money
came his way, and it seldom did, he immediately bought gourds
of palm-wine, called
round his neighbours and made merry. He always said that
whenever he saw a dead
man's mouth he saw the folly of not eating what one had in
one's lifetime. Unoka was, of
course, a debtor, and he owed every neighbour some money,
from a few cowries to quite
substantial amounts.
He was tall but very thin and had a slight stoop. He wore a
haggard and mournful
look except when he was drinking or playing on his flute. He
was very good on his flute,

5. and his happiest moments were the two or three moons after the
harvest when the village
musicians brought down their instruments, hung above the
fireplace. Unoka would play
with them, his face beaming with blessedness and peace.
Sometimes another village
would ask Unoka's band and their dancing egwugwu to come
and stay with them and
teach them their tunes. They would go to such hosts for as long
as three or four markets,
making music and feasting. Unoka loved the good hire and the
good fellowship, and he
loved this season of the year, when the rains had stopped and
the sun rose every morning
with dazzling beauty. And it was not too hot either, because the
cold and dry harmattan
wind was blowing down from the north. Some years the
harmattan was very severe and a
dense haze hung on the atmosphere. Old men and children
would then sit round log fires,
warming their bodies. Unoka loved it all, and he loved the first
kites that returned with
the dry season, and the children who sang songs of welcome to
them. He would

6. remember his own childhood, how he had often wandered
around looking for a kite
sailing leisurely against the blue sky. As soon as he found one
he would sing with his
whole being, welcoming it back from its long, long journey, and
asking it if it had
brought home any lengths of cloth.
That was years ago, when he was young. Unoka, the grown-up,
was a failure. He
was poor and his wife and children had barely enough to eat.
People laughed at him
because he was a loafer, and they swore never to lend him any
more money because he
never paid back. But Unoka was such a man that he always
succeeded in borrowing
more, and piling up his debts.
One day a neighbour called Okoye came in to see him. He was
reclining on a mud
bed in his hut playing on the flute. He immediately rose and
shook hands with Okoye,
who then unrolled the goatskin which he carried under his arm,
and sat down. Unoka

7. went into an inner room and soon returned with a small wooden
disc containing a kola
nut, some alligator pepper and a lump of white chalk.
"I have kola," he announced when he sat down, and passed the
disc over to his
guest.
"Thank you. He who brings kola brings life. But I think you
ought to break it,"
replied Okoye, passing back the disc.
"No, it is for you, I think," and they argued like this for a few
moments before
Unoka accepted the honour of breaking the kola. Okoye,
meanwhile, took the lump of
chalk, drew some lines on the floor, and then painted his big
toe.
As he broke the kola, Unoka prayed to their ancestors for life
and health, and for
protection against their enemies. When they had eaten they
talked about many things:
about the heavy rains which were drowning the yams, about the
next ancestral feast and
about the impending war with the village of Mbaino. Unoka was
never happy when it

8. came to wars. He was in fact a coward and could not bear the
sight of blood. And so he
changed the subject and talked about music, and his face
beamed. He could hear in his
mind's ear the blood-stirring and intricate rhythms of the ekwe
and the udu and the ogene,
and he could hear his own flute weaving in and out of them,
decorating them with a
colourful and plaintive tune. The total effect was gay and brisk,
but if one picked out the
flute as it went up and down and then broke up into short
snatches, one saw that there
was sorrow and grief there.
Okoye was also a musician. He played on the ogene. But he
was not a failure like
Unoka. He had a large barn full of yams and he had three wives.
And now he was going
to take the Idemili title, the third highest in the land. It was a
very expensive ceremony
and he was gathering all his resources together. That was in fact
the reason why he had
come to see Unoka. He cleared his throat and began: "Thank
you for the kola. You may

9. have heard of the title I intend to take shortly."
Having spoken plainly so far, Okoye said the next half a dozen
sentences in
proverbs. Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded
very highly, and proverbs are
the palm-oil with which words are eaten. Okoye was a great
talker and he spoke for a
long time, skirting round the subject and then hitting it finally.
In short, he was asking
Unoka to return the two hundred cowries he had borrowed from
him more than two years
before. As soon as Unoka understood what his friend was
driving at, he burst out
laughing. He laughed loud and long and his voice rang out clear
as the ogene, and tears
stood in his eyes. His visitor was amazed, and sat speechless. At
the end, Unoka was able
to give an answer between fresh outbursts of mirth.
"Look at that wall," he said, pointing at the far wall of his hut,
which was rubbed
with red earth so that it shone. "Look at those lines of chalk,"
and Okoye saw groups of

10. short perpendicular lines drawn in chalk. There were five
groups, and the smallest group
had ten lines. Unoka had a sense of the dramatic and so he
allowed a pause, in which he
took a pinch of snuff and sneezed noisily, and then he
continued: "Each group there
represents a debt to someone, and each stroke is one hundred
cowries. You see, I owe
that man a thousand cowries. But he has not come to wake me
up in the morning for it. I
shall pay you, but not today. Our elders say that the sun will
shine on those who stand
before it shines on those who kneel under them. I shall pay my
big debts first." And he
took another pinch of snuff, as if that was paying the big debts
first. Okoye rolled his
goatskin and departed.
When Unoka died he had taken no title at all and he was
heavily in debt. Any
wonder then that his son Okonkwo was ashamed of him?
Fortunately, among these
people a man was judged according to his worth and not
according to the worth of his
father. Okonkwo was clearly cut out for great things. He was

11. still young but he had won
fame as the greatest wrestler in the nine villages. He was a
wealthy farmer and had two
barns full of yams, and had just married his third wife. To
crown it all he had taken two
titles and had shown incredible prowess in two inter-tribal wars.
And so although
Okonkwo was still young, he was already one of the greatest
men of his time. Age was
respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As
the elders said, if a child
washed his hands he could eat with kings. Okonkwo had clearly
washed his hands and so
he ate with kings and elders. And that was how he came to look
after the doomed lad who
was sacrificed to the village of Umuofia by their neighbours to
avoid war and bloodshed.
The ill-fated lad was called Ikemefuna.
CHAPTER TWO
Okonkwo had just blown out the palm-oil lamp and stretched
himself on his bamboo bed

12. when he heard the ogene of the town crier piercing the still
night air. Gome, gome, gome,
gome, boomed the hollow metal. Then the crier gave his
message, and at the end of it
beat his instrument again. And this was the message. Every man
of Umuofia was asked to
gather at the market place tomorrow morning. Okonkwo
wondered what was amiss, for
he knew certainly that something was amiss. He had discerned a
clear overtone of
tragedy in the crier's voice, and even now he could still hear it
as it grew dimmer and
dimmer in the distance.
The night was very quiet. It was always quiet except on
moonlight nights.
Darkness held a vague terror for these people, even the bravest
among them. Children
were warned not to whistle at night for fear of evil spirits.
Dangerous animals became
even more sinister and uncanny in the dark. A snake was never
called by its name at
night, because it would hear. It was called a string. And so on
this particular night as the

13. crier's voice was gradually swallowed up in the distance, silence
returned to the world, a
vibrant silence made more intense by the universal trill of a
million million forest insects.
On a moonlight night it would be different. The happy voices
of children playing
in open fields would then be heard. And perhaps those not so
young would be playing in
pairs in less open places, and old men and women would
remember their youth. As the
Ibo say: "When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry
for a walk."
But this particular night was dark and silent. And in all the
nine villages of
Umuofia a town crier with his ogene asked every man to be
present tomorrow morning.
Okonkwo on his bamboo bed tried to figure out the nature of the
emergency - war with a
neighbouring clan? That seemed the most likely reason, and he
was not afraid of war. He
was a man of action, a man of war. Unlike his father he could
stand the look of blood. In
Umuofia's latest war he was the first to bring home a human

14. head. That was his fifth head
and he was not an old man yet. On great occasions such as the
funeral of a village
celebrity he drank his palm-wine from his first human head.
In the morning the market place was full. There must have been
about ten
thousand men there, all talking in low voices. At last Ogbuefi
Ezeugo stood up in the
midst of them and bellowed four times, "Umuofia kwenu," and
on each occasion he faced
a different direction and seemed to push the air with a clenched
fist. And ten thousand
men answered "Yaa!" each time. Then there was perfect silence.
Ogbuefi Ezeugo was a
powerful orator and was always chosen to speak on such
occasions. He moved his hand
over his white head and stroked his white beard. He then
adjusted his cloth, which was
passed under his right arm-pit and tied above his left shoulder.
"Umuofia kwenu," he bellowed a fifth time, and the crowd
yelled in answer. And
then suddenly like one possessed he shot out his left hand and
pointed in the direction of

15. Mbaino, and said through gleaming white teeth firmly clenched:
"Those sons of wild
animals have dared to murder a daughter of Umuofia." He threw
his head down and
gnashed his teeth, and allowed a murmur of suppressed anger to
sweep the crowd. When
he began again, the anger on his face was gone, and in its place
a sort of smile hovered,
more terrible and more sinister than the anger. And in a clear
unemotional voice he told
Umuofia how their daughter had gone to market at Mbaino and
had been killed. That
woman, said Ezeugo, was the wife of Ogbuefi Udo, and he
pointed to a man who sat near
him with a bowed head. The crowd then shouted with anger and
thirst for blood.
Many others spoke, and at the end it was decided to follow the
normal course of
action. An ultimatum was immediately dispatched to Mbaino
asking them to choose
between war - on the one hand, and on the other the offer of a
young man and a virgin as
compensation.
Umuofia was feared by all its neighbours. It was powerful in

16. war and in magic,
and its priests and medicine men were feared in all the
surrounding country. Its most
potent war-medicine was as old as the clan itself. Nobody knew
how old. But on one
point there was general agreement--the active principle in that
medicine had been an old
woman with one leg. In fact, the medicine itself was called
agadi-nwayi, or old woman. It
had its shrine in the centre of Umuofia, in a cleared spot. And if
anybody was so
foolhardy as to pass by the shrine after dusk he was sure to see
the old woman hopping
about.
And so the neighbouring clans who naturally knew of these
things feared
Umuofia, and would not go to war against it without first trying
a peaceful settlement.
And in fairness to Umuofia it should be recorded that it never
went to war unless its case
was clear and just and was accepted as such by its Oracle - the
Oracle of the Hills and the
Caves. And there were indeed occasions when the Oracle had
forbidden Umuofia to wage

17. a war. If the clan had disobeyed the Oracle they would surely
have been beaten, because
their dreaded agadi-nwayi would never fight what the Ibo call a
fight of blame.
But the war that now threatened was a just war. Even the
enemy clan knew that.
And so when Okonkwo of Umuofia arrived at Mbaino as the
proud and imperious
emissary of war, he was treated with great honour and respect,
and two days later he
returned home with a lad of fifteen and a young virgin. The
lad's name was Ikemefuna,
whose sad story is still told in Umuofia unto this day.
The elders, or ndichie, met to hear a report of Okonkwo's
mission. At the end they
decided, as everybody knew they would, that the girl should go
to Ogbuefi Udo to
replace his murdered wife. As for the boy, he belonged to the
clan as a whole, and there
was no hurry to decide his fate. Okonkwo was, therefore, asked
on behalf of the clan to
look after him in the interim. And so for three years Ikemefuna

18. lived in Okonkwo's
household.
Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives,
especially the
youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did
his little children. Perhaps
down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole
life was dominated by
fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more
intimate than the fear of
evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest,
and of the forces of nature,
malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater
than these. It was not
external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself,
lest he should be found to
resemble his father. Even as a little boy he had resented his
father's failure and weakness,
and even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a
playmate had told him
that his father was agbala. That was how Okonkwo first came to
know that agbala was
not only another name for a woman, it could also mean a man
who had taken no title.

19. And so Okonkwo was ruled by one passion - to hate everything
that his father Unoka had
loved. One of those things was gentleness and another was
idleness.
During the planting season Okonkwo worked daily on his farms
from cock-crow
until the chickens went to roost. He was a very strong man and
rarely felt fatigue. But his
wives and young children were not as strong, and so they
suffered. But they dared not
complain openly. Okonkwo's first son, Nwoye, was then twelve
years old but was already
causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness. At
any rate, that was how it
looked to his father, and he sought to correct him by constant
nagging and beating. And
so Nwoye was developing into a sad-faced youth.
Okonkwo's prosperity was visible in his household. He had a
large compound
enclosed by a thick wall of red earth. His own hut, or obi, stood
immediately behind the
only gate in the red walls. Each of his three wives had her own
hut, which together

20. formed a half moon behind the obi. The barn was built against
one end of the red walls,
and long stacks of yam stood out prosperously in it. At the
opposite end of the compound
was a shed for the goats, and each wife built a small attachment
to her hut for the hens.
Near the barn was a small house, the "medicine house" or shrine
where Okonkwo kept
the wooden symbols of his personal god and of his ancestral
spirits. He worshipped them
with sacrifices of kola nut, food and palm-wine, and offered
prayers to them on behalf of
himself, his three wives and eight children.
So when the daughter of Umuofia was killed in Mbaino,
Ikemefuna came into
Okonkwo's household. When Okonkwo brought him home that
day he called his most
senior wife and handed him over to her.
"He belongs to the clan," he told her. "So look after him."
"Is he staying long with us?" she asked.
"Do what you are told, woman," Okonkwo thundered, and
stammered. "When did

21. you become one of the ndichie of Umuofia?"
And so Nwoye's mother took Ikemefuna to her hut and asked no
more questions.
As for the boy himself, he was terribly afraid. He could not
understand what was
happening to him or what he had done. How could he know that
his father had taken a
hand in killing a daughter of Umuofia? All he knew was that a
few men had arrived at
their house, conversing with his father in low tones, and at the
end he had been taken out
and handed over to a stranger. His mother had wept bitterly, but
he had been too
surprised to weep. And so the stranger had brought him, and a
girl, a long, long way from
home, through lonely forest paths. He did not know who the girl
was, and he never saw
her again.
CHAPTER THREE
Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men

22. usually had. He did not
inherit a barn from his father. There was no barn to inherit. The
story was told in
Umuofia, of how his father, Unoka, had gone to consult the
Oracle of the Hills and the
Caves to find out why he always had a miserable harvest.
The Oracle was called Agbala, and people came from far and
near to consult it.
They came when misfortune dogged their steps or when they
had a dispute with their
neighbours. They came to discover what the future held for
them or to consult the spirits
of their departed fathers.
The way into the shrine was a round hole at the side of a hill,
just a little bigger
than the round opening into a henhouse. Worshippers and those
who came to seek
knowledge from the god crawled on their belly through the hole
and found themselves in
a dark, endless space in the presence of Agbala. No one had
ever beheld Agbala, except
his priestess. But no one who had ever crawled into his awful
shrine had come out

23. without the fear of his power. His priestess stood by the sacred
fire which she built in the
heart of the cave and proclaimed the will of the god. The fire
did not burn with a flame.
The glowing logs only served to light up vaguely the dark figure
of the priestess.
Sometimes a man came to consult the spirit of his dead father
or relative. It was
said that when such a spirit appeared, the man saw it vaguely in
the darkness, but never
heard its voice. Some people even said that they had heard the
spirits flying and flapping
their wings against the roof of the cave.
Many years ago when Okonkwo was still a boy his father,
Unoka, had gone to
consult Agbala. The priestess in those days was a woman called
Chika. She was full of
the power of her god, and she was greatly feared. Unoka stood
before her and began his
story.
"Every year," he said sadly, "before I put any crop in the earth,
I sacrifice a cock
to Ani, the owner of all land. It is the law of our fathers. I also

24. kill a cock at the shrine of
Ifejioku, the god of yams. I clear the bush and set fire to it
when it is dry. I sow the yams
when the first rain has fallen, and stake them when the young
tendrils appear. I weed" --
"Hold your peace!" screamed the priestess, her voice terrible as
it echoed through the
dark void. "You have offended neither the gods nor your
fathers. And when a man is at
peace with his gods and his ancestors, his harvest will be good
or bad according to the
strength of his arm. You, Unoka, are known in all the clan for
the weakness of your
machete and your hoe. When your neighbours go out with their
axe to cut down virgin
forests, you sow your yams on exhausted farms that take no
labour to clear. They cross
seven rivers to make their farms,- you stay at home and offer
sacrifices to a reluctant soil.
Go home and work like a man."
Unoka was an ill-fated man. He had a bad chi or personal god,
and evil fortune

25. followed him to the grave, or rather to his death, for he had no
grave. He died of the
swelling which was an abomination to the earth goddess. When
a man was afflicted with
swelling in the stomach and the limbs he was not allowed to die
in the house. He was
carried to the Evil Forest and left there to die. There was the
story of a very stubborn man
who staggered back to his house and had to be carried again to
the forest and tied to a
tree. The sickness was an abomination to the earth, and so the
victim could not be buried
in her bowels. He died and rotted away above the earth, and was
not given the first or the
second burial. Such was Unoka's fate. When they carried him
away, he took with him his
flute.
With a father like Unoka, Okonkwo did not have the start in
life which many
young men had. He neither inherited a barn nor a title, nor even
a young wife. But in
spite of these disadvantages, he had begun even in his father's
lifetime to lay the
foundations of a prosperous future. It was slow and painful. But

26. he threw himself into it
like one possessed. And indeed he was possessed by the fear of
his father's contemptible
life and shameful death.
There was a wealthy man in Okonkwo's village who had three
huge barns, nine
wives and thirty children. His name was Nwakibie and he had
taken the highest but one
title which a man could take in the clan. It was for this man that
Okonkwo worked to earn
his first seed yams.
He took a pot of palm-wine and a cock to Nwakibie. Two
elderly neighbours were
sent for, and Nwakibie's two grown-up sons were also present in
his obi. He presented a
kola nut and an alligator pepper, which were passed round for
all to see and then returned
to him. He broke the nut saying: We shall all live. We pray for
life, children, a good
harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I
will have what is good
for me. Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too. If one
says no to the other, let his

27. wing break."
After the kola nut had been eaten Okonkwo brought his palm-
wine from the
corner of the hut where it had been placed and stood it in the
centre of the group. He
addressed Nwakibie, calling him "Our father."
"Nna ayi," he said. "I have brought you this little kola. As our
people say, a man
who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own
greatness. I have come to pay
you my respects and also to ask a favour. But let us drink the
wine first."
Everybody thanked Okonkwo and the neighbours brought out
their drinking horns
from the goatskin bags they carried. Nwakibie brought down his
own horn, which was
fastened to the rafters. The younger of his sons, who was also
the youngest man in the
group, moved to the centre, raised the pot on his left knee and
began to pour out the wine.
The first cup went to Okonkwo, who must taste his wine before
anyone else. Then the

28. group drank, beginning with the eldest man. When everyone had
drunk two or three
horns, Nwakibie sent for his wives. Some of them were not at
home and only four came
in.
"Is Anasi not in?" he asked them. They said she was coming.
Anasi was the first
wife and the others could not drink before her, and so they
stood waiting.
Anasi was a middle-aged woman, tall and strongly built. There
was authority in
her bearing and she looked every inch the ruler of the
womenfolk in a large and
prosperous family. She wore the anklet of her husband's titles,
which the first wife alone
could wear.
She walked up to her husband and accepted the horn from him.
She then went
down on one knee, drank a little and handed back the horn. She
rose, called him by his
name and went back to her hut. The other wives drank in the
same way, in their proper
order, and went away.

29. The men then continued their drinking and talking. Ogbuefi
Idigo was talking
about the palm-wine tapper, Obiako, who suddenly gave up his
trade.
"There must be something behind it," he said, wiping the foam
of wine from his
moustache with the back of his left hand. "There must be a
reason for it. A toad does not
run in the daytime for nothing."
"Some people say the Oracle warned him that he would fall off
a palm tree and
kill himself," said Akukalia.
"Obiako has always been a strange one," said Nwakibie. "I
have heard that many
years ago, when his father had not been dead very long, he had
gone to consult the
Oracle. The Oracle said to him, 'Your dead father wants you to
sacrifice a goat to him.'
Do you know what he told the Oracle? He said, 'Ask my dead
father if he ever had a fowl
when he was alive.' Everybody laughed heartily except
Okonkwo, who laughed uneasily
because, as the saying goes, an old woman is always uneasy
when dry bones are

30. mentioned in a proverb. Okonkwo remembered his own father.
At last the young man who was pouring out the wine held up
half a horn of the
thick, white dregs and said, "What we are eating is finished."
"We have seen it," the others replied. "Who will drink the
dregs?" he asked.
"Whoever has a job in hand," said Idigo, looking at Nwakibie's
elder son Igwelo with a
malicious twinkle in his eye.
Everybody agreed that Igwelo should drink the dregs. He
accepted the half-full
horn from his brother and drank it. As Idigo had said, Igwelo
had a job in hand because
he had married his first wife a month or two before. The thick
dregs of palm-wine were
supposed to be good for men who were going in to their wives.
After the wine had been drunk Okonkwo laid his difficulties
before Nwakibie.
"I have come to you for help," he said. "Perhaps you can
already guess what it is.
I have cleared a farm but have no yams to sow. I know what it
is to ask a man to trust

31. another with his yams, especially these days when young men
are afraid of hard work. I
am not afraid of work. The lizard that jumped from the high
iroko tree to the ground said
he would praise himself if no one else did. I began to fend for
myself at an age when
most people still suck at their mothers' breasts. If you give me
some yam seeds I shall not
fail you."
Nwakibie cleared his throat. "It pleases me to see a young man
like you these
days when our youth has gone so soft. Many young men have
come to me to ask for
yams but I have refused because I knew they would just dump
them in the earth and leave
them to be choked by weeds. When I say no to them they think I
am hard hearted. But it
is not so. Eneke the bird says that since men have learned to
shoot without missing, he
has learned to fly without perching. I have learned to be stingy
with my yams. But I can
trust you. I know it as I look at you. As our fathers said, you
can tell a ripe corn by its

32. look. I shall give you twice four hundred yams. Go ahead and
prepare your farm."
Okonkwo thanked him again and again and went home feeling
happy. He knew
that Nwakibie would not refuse him, but he had not expected he
would be so generous.
He had not hoped to get more than four hundred seeds. He
would now have to make a
bigger farm. He hoped to get another four hundred yams from
one of his father's friends
at Isiuzo.
Share-cropping was a very slow way of building up a barn of
one's own. After all
the toil one only got a third of the harvest. But for a young man
whose father had no
yams, there was no other way. And what made it worse in
Okonkwo's case was that he
had to support his mother and two sisters from his meagre
harvest. And supporting his
mother also meant supporting his father. She could not be
expected to cook and eat while
her husband starved. And so at a very early age when he was
striving desperately to build

33. a barn through share-cropping Okonkwo was also fending for
his father's house. It was
like pouring grains of corn into a bag full of holes. His mother
and sisters worked hard
enough, but they grew women's crops, like coco-yams, beans
and cassava. Yam, the king
of crops, was a man's crop.
The year that Okonkwo took eight hundred seed-yams from
Nwakibie was the
worst year in living memory. Nothing happened at its proper
time,- it was either too early
or too late. It seemed as if the world had gone mad. The first
rains were late, and, when
they came, lasted only a brief moment. The blazing sun
returned, more fierce than it had
ever been known, and scorched all the green that had appeared
with the rains. The earth
burned like hot coals and roasted all the yams that had been
sown. Like all good farmers,
Okonkwo had begun to sow with the first rains. He had sown
four hundred seeds when
the rains dried up and the heat returned. He watched the sky all
day for signs of rain
clouds and lay awake all night. In the morning he went back to

34. his farm and saw the
withering tendrils. He had tried to protect them from the
smouldering earth by making
rings of thick sisal leaves around them. But by the end of the
day the sisal rings were
burned dry and grey. He changed them every day, and prayed
that the rain might fall in
the night. But the drought continued for eight market weeks and
the yams were killed.
Some farmers had not planted their yams yet. They were the
lazy easy-going ones
who always put off clearing their farms as long as they could.
This year they were the
wise ones. They sympathised with their neighbours with much
shaking of the head, but
inwardly they were happy for what they took to be their own
foresight.
Okonkwo planted what was left of his seed-yams when the
rains finally returned.
He had one consolation. The yams he had sown before the
drought were his own, the
harvest of the previous year. He still had the eight hundred from
Nwakibie and the four
hundred from his father's friend. So he would make a fresh

35. start.
But the year had gone mad. Rain fell as it had never fallen
before. For days and
nights together it poured down in violent torrents, and washed
away the yam heaps. Trees
were uprooted and deep gorges appeared everywhere. Then the
rain became less violent.
But it went from day to day without a pause. The spell of
sunshine which always came in
the middle of the wet season did not appear. The yams put on
luxuriant green leaves, but
every farmer knew that without sunshine the tubers would not
grow.
That year the harvest was sad, like a funeral, and many farmers
wept as they dug
up the miserable and rotting yams. One man tied his cloth to a
tree branch and hanged
himself.
Okonkwo remembered that tragic year with a cold shiver
throughout the rest of
his life. It always surprised him when he thought of it later that
he did not sink under the

36. load of despair. He knew that he was a fierce fighter, but that
year-had been enough to
break the heart of a lion.
"Since I survived that year," he always said, "I shall survive
anything." He put it
down to his inflexible will.
His father, Unoka, who was then an ailing man, had said to him
during that
terrible harvest month: "Do not despair. I know you will not
despair. You have a manly
and a proud heart. A proud heart can survive a general failure
because such failure does
not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a
man fails alone."
Unoka was like that in his last days. His love of talk had grown
with age and
sickness. It tried Okonkwo's patience beyond words.
CHAPTER FOUR
"Looking at a king's mouth," said an old man, "one would think
he never sucked at his

37. mother's breast." He was talking about Okonkwo, who had risen
so suddenly from great
poverty and misfortune to be one of the lords of the clan. The
old man bore no ill will
towards Okonkwo. Indeed he respected him for his industry and
success. But he was
struck, as most people were, by Okonkwo's brusqueness in
dealing with less successful
men. Only a week ago a man had contradicted him at a kindred
meeting which they held
to discuss the next ancestral feast. Without looking at the man
Okonkwo had said: "This
meeting is for men." The man who had contradicted him had no
titles. That was why he
had called him a woman. Okonkwo knew how to kill a man's
spirit.
Everybody at the kindred meeting took sides with Osugo when
Okonkwo called
him a woman. The oldest man present said sternly that those
whose palm-kernels were
cracked for them by a benevolent spirit should not forget to be
humble. Okonkwo said he
was sorry for what he had said, and the meeting continued.
But it was really not true that Okonkwo's palm-kernels had

38. been cracked for him
by a benevolent spirit. He had cracked them himself. Anyone
who knew his grim struggle
against poverty and misfortune could not say he had been lucky.
If ever a man deserved
his success, that man was Okonkwo. At an early age he had
achieved fame as the greatest
wrestler in all the land. That was not luck. At the most one
could say that his chi or
personal god was good. But the Ibo people have a proverb that
when a man says yes his
chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly, so his chi
agreed. And not only his chi
but his clan too, because it judged a man by the work of his
hands. That was why
Okonkwo had been Chosen by the nine villages to carry a
message of war to their
enemies unless they agreed to give up a young man and a virgin
to atone for the murder
of Udo's wife. And such was the deep fear that their enemies
had for Umuofia that they
treated Okonkwo like a king and brought him a virgin who was
given to Udo as wife, and

39. the lad Ikemefuna.
The elders of the clan had decided that Ikemefuna should be in
Okonkwo's care
for a while. But no one thought It would be as long as three
years. They seemed to forget
all about him as soon as they had taken the decision.
At first Ikemefuna was very much afraid. Once or twice he
tried to run away, but
he did not know where to begin. He thought of his mother and
his three-year-old sister
and wept bitterly. Nwoye's mother was very kind to him and
treated him as one of her
own children. But all he said was: "When shall I go home?"
When Okonkwo heard that
he would not eat any food he came into the hut with a big stick
in his hand and stood over
him while he swallowed his yams, trembling. A few moments
later he went behind the
hut and began to vomit painfully. Nwoye's mother went to him
and placed her hands on
his chest and on his back. He was ill for three market weeks,
and when he recovered he
seemed to have overcome his great fear and sadness.

40. He was by nature a very lively boy and he gradually became
popular in
Okonkwo's household, especially with the children. Okonkwo's
son, Nwoye, who was
two years younger, became quite inseparable from him because
he seemed to know
everything. He could fashion out flutes from bamboo stems and
even from the elephant
grass. He knew the names of all the birds and could set clever
traps for the little bush
rodents. And he knew which trees made the strongest bows.
Even Okonkwo himself became very fond of the boy - inwardly
of course.
Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly, unless it be the
emotion of anger. To show
affection was a sign of weakness,-the only thing worth
demonstrating was strength. He
therefore treated Ikemefuna as he treated everybody else - with
a heavy hand. But there
was no doubt that he liked the boy. Sometimes when he went to
big village meetings or
communal ancestral feasts he allowed Ikemefuna to accompany
him, like a son, carrying

41. his stool and his goatskin bag. And, indeed, Ikemefuna called
him father.
Ikemefuna came to Umuofia at the end of the carefree season
between harvest and
planting. In fact he recovered from his illness only a few days
before the Week of Peace
began. And that was also the year Okonkwo broke the peace,
and was punished, as was
the custom, by Ezeani, the priest of the earth goddess.
Okonkwo was provoked to justifiable anger by his youngest
wife, who went to
plait her hair at her friend's house and did not return early
enough to cook the afternoon
meal. Okonkwo did not know at first that she was not at home.
After waiting in vain for
her dish he went to her hut to see what she was doing. There
was nobody in the hut and
the fireplace was cold.
"Where is Ojiugo?" he asked his second wife, who came out of
her hut to draw
water from a gigantic pot in the shade of a small tree in the
middle of the compound.
"She has gone to plait her hair."

42. Okonkwo bit his lips as anger welled up within him.
"Where are her children? Did she take them?" he asked with
unusual coolness and
restraint.
"They are here," answered his first wife, Nwoye's mother.
Okonkwo bent down
and looked into her hut. Ojiugo's children were eating with the
children of his first wife.
"Did she ask you to feed them before she went?"
"Yes," lied Nwoye's mother, trying to minimise Ojiugo's
thoughtlessness.
Okonkwo knew she was not speaking the truth. He walked back
to his obi to
await Ojiugo's return. And when she returned he beat her very
heavily. In his anger he
had forgotten that it was the Week of Peace. His first two wives
ran out in great alarm
pleading with him that it was the sacred week.
But Okonkwo was not the man to stop beating somebody half-
way through, not
even for fear of a goddess.

43. Okonkwo's neighbours heard his wife crying and sent their
voices over the
compound walls to ask what was the matter. Some of them came
over to see for
themselves. It was unheard of to beat somebody during the
sacred week.
Before it was dusk Ezeani, who was the priest of the earth
goddess, Ani, called on
Okonkwo in his obi. Okonkwo brought out kola nut and placed
it before the priest, "Take
away your kola nut. I shall not eat in the house of a man who
has no respect for our gods
and ancestors."
Okonkwo tried to explain to him what his wife had done, but
Ezeani seemed to
pay no attention. He held a short staff in his hand which he
brought down on the floor to
emphasise his points.
"Listen to me," he said when Okonkwo had spoken. "You are
not a stranger in
Umuofia. You know as well as I do that our forefathers ordained
that before we plant any
crops in the earth we should observe a week in which a man
does not say a harsh word to

44. his neighbour. We live in peace with our fellows to honour our
great goddess of the earth
without whose blessing our crops will not grow. You have
committed a great evil." He
brought down his staff heavily on the floor. "Your wife was at
fault, but even if you came
into your obi and found her lover on top of her, you would still
have committed a great
evil to beat her." His staff came down again. "The evil you have
done can ruin the whole
clan. The earth goddess whom you have insulted may refuse to
give us her increase, and
we shall all perish." His tone now changed from anger to
command. "You will bring to
the shrine of Ani tomorrow one she-goat, one hen, a length of
cloth and a hundred
cowries." He rose and left the hut.
Okonkwo did as the priest said. He also took with him a pot of
palm-wine.
Inwardly, he was repentant. But he was not the man to go about
telling his neighbours
that he was in error. And so people said he had no respect for
the gods of the clan. His

45. enemies said his good fortune had gone to his head. They called
him the little bird nza
who so far forgot himself after a heavy meal that he challenged
his chi.
No work was done during the Week of Peace. People called on
their neighbours
and drank palm-wine. This year they talked of nothing else but
the nso-ani which
Okonkwo had committed. It was the first time for many years
that a man had broken the
sacred peace. Even the oldest men could only remember one or
two other occasions
somewhere in the dim past.
Ogbuefi Ezeudu, who was the oldest man in the village, was
telling two other men
who came to visit him that the punishment for breaking the
Peace of Ani had become
very mild in their clan.
"It has not always been so," he said. "My father told me that he
had been told that
in the past a man who broke the peace was dragged on the
ground through the village

46. until he died. But after a while this custom was stopped because
it spoiled the peace
which it was meant to preserve."
"Somebody told me yesterday," said one of the younger men,
"that in some clans
it is an abomination for a man to die during the Week of Peace."
"It is indeed true," said Ogbuefi Ezeudu. "They have that
custom in Obodoani. If
a man dies at this time he is not buried but cast into the Evil
Forest. It is a bad custom
which these people observe because they lack understanding.
They throw away large
numbers of men and women without burial. And what is the
result? Their clan is full of
the evil spirits of these unburied dead, hungry to do harm to the
living."
After the Week of Peace every man and his family began to
clear the bush to
make new farms. The cut bush was left to dry and fire was then
set to it. As the smoke
rose into the sky kites appeared from different directions and
hovered over the burning
field in silent valediction. The rainy season was approaching
when they would go away

47. until the dry season returned.
Okonkwo spent the next few days preparing his seed-yams. He
looked at each
yam carefully to see whether it was good for sowing. Sometimes
he decided that a yam
was too big to be sown as one seed and he split it deftly along
its length with his sharp
knife. His eldest son, Nwoye, and Ikemefuna helped him by
fetching the yams in long
baskets from the barn and in counting the prepared seeds in
groups of four hundred.
Sometimes Okonkwo gave them a few yams each to prepare. But
he always found fault
with their effort, and he said so with much threatening.
"Do you think you are cutting up yams for cooking?" he asked
Nwoye. "If you
split another yam of this size, I shall break your jaw. You think
you are still a child. I
began to own a farm at your age. And you," he said to
Ikemefuna, "do you not grow
yams where you come from?"
Inwardly Okonkwo knew that the boys were still too young to
understand fully

48. the difficult art of preparing seed-yams. But he thought that one
could not begin too
early. Yam stood for manliness, and he who could feed his
family on yams from one
harvest to another was a very great man indeed. Okonkwo
wanted his son to be a great
farmer and a great man. He would stamp out the disquieting
signs of laziness which he
thought he already saw in him.
"I will not have a son who cannot hold up his head in the
gathering of the clan. I
would sooner strangle him with my own hands. And if you stand
staring at me like that,"
he swore, "Amadiora will break your head for you!"
Some days later, when the land had been moistened by two or
three heavy rains,
Okonkwo and his family went to the farm with baskets of seed-
yams, their hoes and
machetes, and the planting began. They made single mounds of
earth in straight lines all
over the field and sowed the yams in them.
Yam, the king of crops, was a very exacting king. For three or
four moons it

49. demanded hard work and constant attention from cockcrow till
the chickens went back to
roost. The young tendrils were protected from earth-heat with
rings of sisal leaves. As the
rains became heavier the women planted maize, melons and
beans between the yam
mounds. The yams were then staked, first with little sticks and
later with tall and big tree
branches. The women weeded the farm three times at definite
periods in the life of the
yams, neither early nor late.
And now the rains had really come, so heavy and persistent that
even the village
rain-maker no longer claimed to be able to intervene. He could
not stop the rain now, just
as he would not attempt to start it in the heart of the dry season,
without serious danger to
his own health. The personal dynamism required to counter the
forces of these extremes
of weather would be far too great for the human frame.
And so nature was not interfered with in the middle of the rainy
season.

50. Sometimes it poured down in such thick sheets of water that
earth and sky seemed
merged in one grey wetness. It was then uncertain whether the
low rumbling of
Amadiora's thunder came from above or below. At such times,
in each of the countless
thatched huts of Umuofia, children sat around their mother's
cooking fire telling stories,
or with their father in his obi warming themselves from a log
fire, roasting and eating
maize. It was a brief resting period between the exacting and
arduous planting season and
the equally exacting but light-hearted month of harvests.
Ikemefuna had begun to feel like a member of Okonkwo's
family. He still thought
about his mother and his three-year-old sister, and he had
moments of sadness and
depression But he and Nwoye had become so deeply attached to
each other that such
moments became less frequent and less poignant. Ikemefuna had
an endless stock of folk
tales. Even those which Nwoye knew already were told with a
new freshness and the

51. local flavour of a different clan. Nwoye remembered this period
very vividly till the end
of his life. He even remembered how he had laughed when
Ikemefuna told him that the
proper name for a corn cob with only a few scattered grains was
eze-agadi-nwayi, or the
teeth of an old woman. Nwoye's mind had gone immediately to
Nwayieke, who lived
near the udala tree. She had about three teeth and was always
smoking her pipe.
Gradually the rains became lighter and less frequent, and earth
and sky once again
became separate. The rain fell in thin, slanting showers through
sunshine and quiet
breeze. Children no longer stayed indoors but ran about singing:
"The rain is falling, the
sun is shining, Alone Nnadi is cooking and eating."
Nwoye always wondered who Nnadi was and why he should
live all by himself,
cooking and eating. In the end he decided that Nnadi must live
in that land of Ikemefuna's
favourite story where the ant holds his court in splendour and
the sands dance forever.

52. CHAPTER FIVE
The Feast of the New Yam was approaching and Umuofia was in
a festival mood. It was
an occasion for giving thanks to Ani, the earth goddess and the
source of all fertility. Ani
played a greater part in the life of the people than any other
deity. She was the ultimate
judge of morality and conduct. And what was more, she was in
close communion with
the departed fathers of the clan whose bodies had been
committed to earth.
The Feast of the New Yam was held every year before the
harvest began, to
honour the earth goddess and the ancestral spirits of the clan.
New yams could not be
eaten until some had first been offered to these powers. Men
and women, young and old,
looked forward to the New Yam Festival because it began the
season of plenty--the new
year. On the last night before the festival, yams of the old year
were all disposed of by
those who still had them. The new year must begin with tasty,

53. fresh yams and not the
shrivelled and fibrous crop of the previous year. All cooking
pots, calabashes and
wooden bowls were thoroughly washed, especially the wooden
mortar in which yam was
pounded. Yam foo-foo and vegetable soup was the chief food in
the celebration. So much
of it was cooked that, no matter how heavily the family ate or
how many friends and
relatives they invited from neighbouring villages, there was
always a large quantity of
food left over at the end of the day. The story was always told
of a wealthy man who set
before his guests a mound of foo-foo so high that those who sat
on one side could not see
what was happening on the other, and it was not until late in the
evening that one of them
saw for the first time his in-law who had arrived during the
course of the meal and had
fallen to on the opposite side. It was only then that they
exchanged greetings and shook
hands over what was left of the food.

54. The New Yam Festival was thus an occasion for joy throughout
Umuofia. And
every man whose arm was strong, as the Ibo people say, was
expected to invite large
numbers of guests from far and wide. Okonkwo always asked
his wives' relations, and
since he now had three wives his guests would make a fairly big
crowd.
But somehow Okonkwo could never become as enthusiastic
over feasts as most
people. He was a good eater and he could drink one or two
fairly big gourds of palm-
wine. But he was always uncomfortable sitting around for days
waiting for a feast or
getting over it. He would be very much happier working on his
farm.
The festival was now only three days away. Okonkwo's wives
had scrubbed the
walls and the huts with red earth until they reflected light. They
had then drawn patterns
on them in white, yellow and dark green. They then set about
painting themselves with
cam wood and drawing beautiful black patterns on their
stomachs and on their backs. The

55. children were also decorated, especially their hair, which was
shaved in beautiful
patterns. The three women talked excitedly about the relations
who had been invited, and
the children revelled in the thought of being spoiled by these
visitors from the
motherland. Ikemefuna was equally excited. The New Yam
Festival seemed to him to be
a much bigger event here than in his own village, a place which
was already becoming
remote and vague in his imagination.
And then the storm burst. Okonkwo, who had been walking
about aimlessly in his
compound in suppressed anger, suddenly found an outlet.
"Who killed this banana tree?" he asked.
A hush fell on the compound immediately.
"Who killed this tree? Or are you all deaf and dumb?"
As a matter of fact the tree was very much alive. Okonkwo's
second wife had
merely cut a few leaves off it to wrap some food, and she said
so. Without further
argument Okonkwo gave her a sound beating and left her and
her only daughter weeping.

56. Neither of the other wives dared to interfere beyond an
occasional and tentative, "It is
enough, Okonkwo," pleaded from a reasonable distance.
His anger thus satisfied, Okonkwo decided to go out hunting.
He had an old rusty
gun made by a clever blacksmith who had come to live in
Umuofia long ago. But
although Okonkwo was a great man whose prowess was
universally acknowledged, he
was not a hunter. In fact he had not killed a rat with his gun.
And so when he called
Ikemefuna to fetch his gun, the wife who had just been beaten
murmured something
about guns that never shot. Unfortunately for her Okonkwo
heard it and ran madly into
his room for the loaded gun, ran out again and aimed at her as
she clambered over the
dwarf wall of the barn. He pressed the trigger and there was a
loud report accompanied
by the wail of his wives and children. He threw down the gun
and jumped into the barn
and there lay the woman, very much shaken and frightened but

57. quite unhurt. He heaved a
heavy sigh and went away with the gun.
In spite of this incident the New Yam Festival was celebrated
with great joy in
Okonkwo's household. Early that morning as he offered a
sacrifice of new yam and palm
oil to his ancestors he asked them to protect him, his children
and their mothers in the
new year.
As the day wore on his in-laws arrived from three surrounding
villages, and each
party brought with them a huge pot of palm-wine. And there
was eating and drinking till
night, when Okonkwo's in-laws began to leave for their homes
The second day of the
new year was the day of the great wrestling match between
Okonkwo's village and their
neighbours. It was difficult to say which the people enjoyed
more, the feasting and
fellowship of the first day or the wrestling Contest of the
second. But there was one
woman who had no doubt whatever in her mind. She was
Okonkwo's second wife

58. Ekwefi, whom he nearly shot. There was no festival in all the
seasons of the year which
gave her as much pleasure as the wrestling match. Many years
ago when she was the
village beauty Okonkwo had won her heart by throwing the Cat
in the greatest contest
within living memory. She did not marry him then because he
was too poor to pay her
bride-price. But a few years later she ran away from her
husband and came to live with
Okonkwo. All this happened many years ago. Now Ekwefi was a
woman of forty-five
who had suffered a great deal in her time. But her love of
wrestling contests was still as
strong as it was thirty years ago.
It was not yet noon on the second day of the New Yam
Festival. Ekwefi and her
only daughter, Ezinma, sat near the fireplace waiting for the
water in the pot to boil. The
fowl Ekwefi had just killed was in the wooden mortar. The
water began to boil, and in
one deft movement she lifted the pot from the fire and poured
the boiling water over the
fowl. She put back the empty pot on the circular pad in the

59. corner, and looked at her
palms, which were black with soot. Ezinma was always
surprised that her mother could
lift a pot from the fire with her bare hands.
"Ekwefi," she said, "is it true that when people are grown up,
fire does not burn
them?" Ezinma, unlike most children, called her mother by her
name.
"Yes," replied Ekwefi, too busy to argue. Her daughter was
only ten years old but
she was wiser than her years.
"But Nwoye's mother dropped her pot of hot soup the other day
and it broke on
the floor."
Ekwefi turned the hen over in the mortar and began to pluck
the feathers.
"Ekwefi," said Ezinma, who had joined in plucking the
feathers, "my eyelid is
twitching."
"It means you are going to cry," said her mother.
"No," Ezinma said, "it is this eyelid, the top one."
"That means you will see something."

60. "What will I see?" she asked.
"How can I know?" Ekwefi wanted her to work it out herself.
"Oho," said Ezinma at last. "I know what it is--the wrestling
match."
At last the hen was plucked clean. Ekwefi tried to pull out the
horny beak but it
was too hard. She turned round on her low stool and put the
beak in the fire for a few
moments. She pulled again and it came off.
"Ekwefi!" a voice called from one of the other huts. It was
Nwoye's mother,
Okonkwo's first wife.
"Is that me?" Ekwefi called back. That was the way people
answered calls from
outside. They never answered yes for fear it might be an evil
spirit calling.
"Will you give Ezinma some fire to bring to me?" Her own
children and
Ikemefuna had gone to the stream.
Ekwefi put a few live coals into a piece of broken pot and
Ezinma carried it across

61. the clean swept compound to Nwoye's mother.
"Thank you, Nma," she said. She was peeling new yams, and in
a basket beside
her were green vegetables and beans.
"Let me make the fire for you," Ezinma offered.
"Thank you, Ezigbo," she said. She often called her Ezigbo,
which means "the
good one."
Ezinma went outside and brought some sticks from a huge
bundle of firewood.
She broke them into little pieces across the sole of her foot and
began to build a fire,
blowing it with her breath.
"You will blow your eyes out," said Nwoye's mother, looking
up from the yams
she was peeling. "Use the fan." She stood up and pulled out the
fan which was fastened
into one of the rafters. As soon as she got up, the troublesome
nanny goat, which had
been dutifully eating yam peelings, dug her teeth into the real
thing, scooped out two
mouthfuls and fled from the hut to chew the cud in the goats'

62. shed. Nwoye's mother
swore at her and settled down again to her peeling. Ezinma's
fire was now sending up
thick clouds of smoke. She went on fanning it until it burst into
flames. Nwoye's mother
thanked her and she went back to her mother's hut.
Just then the distant beating of drums began to reach them. It
came from the
direction of the ilo, the village playground. Every village had
its own ilo which was as
old as the village itself and where all the great ceremonies and
dances took place. The
drums beat the unmistakable wrestling dance - quick, light and
gay, and it came floating
on the wind.
Okonkwo cleared his throat and moved his feet to the beat of
the drums. It filled
him with fire as it had always done from his youth. He trembled
with the desire to
conquer and subdue. It was like the desire for woman.
"We shall be late for the wrestling," said Ezinma to her mother.
"They will not begin until the sun goes down."

63. "But they are beating the drums."
"Yes. The drums begin at noon but the wrestling waits until the
sun begins to
sink. Go and see if your father has brought out yams for the
afternoon."
"He has. Nwoye's mother is already cooking."
"Go and bring our own, then. We must cook quickly or we shall
be late for the
wrestling."
Ezinma ran in the direction of the barn and brought back two
yams from the
dwarf wall.
Ekwefi peeled the yams quickly. The troublesome nanny-goat
sniffed about,
eating the peelings. She cut the yams into small pieces and
began to prepare a pottage,
using some of the chicken.
At that moment they heard someone crying just outside their
compound. It was
very much like Obiageli, Nwoye's sister.
"Is that not Obiageli weeping?" Ekwefi called across the yard

64. to Nwoye's mother.
"Yes," she replied. "She must have broken her waterpot."
The weeping was now quite close and soon the children filed
in, carrying on their
heads various sizes of pots suitable to their years. Ikemefuna
came first with the biggest
pot, closely followed by Nwoye and his two younger brothers.
Obiageli brought up the
rear, her face streaming with tears. In her hand was the cloth
pad on which the pot should
have rested on her head.
"What happened?" her mother asked, and Obiageli told her
mournful story. Her
mother consoled her and promised to buy her another pot.
Nwoye's younger brothers were about to tell their mother the
true story of the
accident when Ikemefuna looked at them sternly and they held
their peace. The fact was
that Obiageli had been making inyanga with her pot. She had
balanced it on her head,
folded her arms in front of her and began to sway her waist like
a grown-up young lady.
When the pot fell down and broke she burst out laughing. She

65. only began to weep when
they got near the iroko tree outside their compound.
The drums were still beating, persistent and unchanging. Their
sound was no
longer a separate thing from the living village. It was like the
pulsation of its heart. It
throbbed in the air, in the sunshine, and even in the trees, and
filled the village with
excitement.
Ekwefi ladled her husband's share of the pottage into a bowl
and covered it.
Ezinma took it to him in his obi.
Okonkwo was sitting on a goatskin already eating his first
wife's meal. Obiageli,
who had brought it from her mother's hut, sat on the floor
waiting for him to finish.
Ezinma placed her mother's dish before him and sat with
Obiageli.
"Sit like a woman!" Okonkwo shouted at her. Ezinma brought
her two legs
together and stretched them in front of her.
"Father, will you go to see the wrestling?" Ezinma asked after a
suitable interval.

66. "Yes," he answered. "Will you go?"
"Yes." And after a pause she said: "Can I bring your chair for
you?"
"No, that is a boy's job." Okonkwo was specially fond of
Ezinma. She looked
very much like her mother, who was once the village beauty.
But his fondness only
showed on very rare occasions.
"Obiageli broke her pot today," Ezinma said.
"Yes, she has told me about it," Okonkwo said between
mouthfuls.
"Father," said Obiageli, "people should not talk when they are
eating or pepper
may go down the wrong way."
"That is very true. Do you hear that, Ezinma? You are older
than Obiageli but she
has more sense."
He uncovered his second wife's dish and began to eat from it.
Obiageli took the
first dish and returned to her mother's hut. And then Nkechi
came in, bringing the third
dish. Nkechi was the daughter of Okonkwo's third wife.

67. In the distance the drums continued to beat.
CHAPTER Six
The whole village turned out on the ilo, men, women and
children. They stood round in a
huge circle leaving the centre of the playground free. The elders
and grandees of the
village sat on their own stools brought there by their young sons
or slaves. Okonkwo was
among them. All others stood except those who came early
enough to secure places on
the few stands which had been built by placing smooth logs on
forked pillars.
The wrestlers were not there yet and the drummers held the
field. They too sat just
in front of the huge circle of spectators, facing the elders.
Behind them was the big and
ancient silk-cotton tree which was sacred. Spirits of good
children lived in that tree
waiting to be born. On ordinary days young women who desired

68. children came to sit
under its shade.
There were seven drums and they were arranged according to
their sizes in a long
wooden basket. Three men beat them with sticks, working
feverishly from one drum to
another. They were possessed by the spirit of the drums.
The young men who kept order on these occasions dashed
about, consulting
among themselves and with the leaders of the two wrestling
teams, who were still outside
the circle, behind the crowd. Once in a while two young men
carrying palm fronds ran
round the circle and kept the crowd back by beating the ground
in front of them or, if
they were stubborn, their legs and feet.
At last the two teams danced into the circle and the crowd
roared and clapped.
The drums rose to a frenzy. The people surged forward. The
young men who kept order
flew around, waving their palm fronds. Old men nodded to the
beat of the drums and
remembered the days when they wrestled to its intoxicating

69. rhythm.
The contest began with boys of fifteen or sixteen. There were
only three such
boys in each team. They were not the real wrestlers,-they
merely set the scene. Within a
short time the first two bouts were over. But the third created a
big sensation even among
the elders who did not usually show their excitement so openly.
It was as quick as the
other two, perhaps even quicker. But very few people had ever
seen that kind of wrestling
before. As soon as the two boys closed in, one of them did
something which no one could
describe because it had been as quick as a flash. And the other
boy was flat on his back.
The crowd roared and clapped and for a while drowned the
frenzied drums. Okonkwo
sprang to his feet and quickly sat down again. Three young men
from the victorious boy's
team ran forward, carried him shoulder high and danced through
the cheering crowd.
Everybody soon knew who the boy was. His name was Maduka,
the son of Obierika.
The drummers stopped for a brief rest before the real matches.

70. Their bodies shone
with sweat, and they took up fans and began to fan themselves.
They also drank water
from small pots and ate kola nuts. They became ordinary human
beings again, talking and
laughing among themselves and with others who stood near
them. The air, which had
been stretched taut with excitement, relaxed again. It was as if
water had been poured on
the tightened skin of a drum. Many people looked around,
perhaps for the first time, and
saw those who stood or sat next to them.
"I did not know it was you," Ekwefi said to the woman who had
stood shoulder to
shoulder with her since the beginning of the matches.
"I do not blame you," said the woman. "I have never seen such
a large crowd of
people. Is it true that Okonkwo nearly killed you with his gun?"
"It is true indeed, my dear friend. I cannot yet find a mouth
with which to tell the
story."

71. "Your chi is very much awake, my friend. And how is my
daughter, Ezinma?"
"She has been very well for some time now. Perhaps she has
come to stay."
"I think she has. How old is she now?"
"She is about ten years old."
"I think she will stay. They usually stay if they do not die
before the age of six."
"I pray she stays," said Ekwefi with a heavy sigh.
The woman with whom she talked was called Chielo. She was
the priestess of
Agbala, the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves. In ordinary life
Chielo was a widow with
two children. She was very friendly with Ekwefi and they
shared a common shed in the
market. She was particularly fond of Ekwefi's only daughter,
Ezinma, whom she called
"my daughter." Quite often she bought beancakes and gave
Ekwefi some to take home to
Ezinma. Anyone seeing Chielo in ordinary life would hardly
believe she was the same
person who prophesied when the spirit of Agbala was upon her.
The drummers took up their sticks and the air shivered and

72. grew tense like a
tightened bow.
The two teams were ranged facing each other across the clear
space. A young
man from one team danced across the centre to the other side
and pointed at whomever
he wanted to fight. They danced back to the centre together and
then closed in.
There were twelve men on each side and the challenge went
from one side to the
other. Two judges walked around the wrestlers and when they
thought they were equally
matched, stopped them. Five matches ended in this way. But the
really exciting moments
were when a man was thrown. The huge voice of the crowd then
rose to the sky and in
every direction. It was even heard in the surrounding villages.
The last match was between the leaders of the teams. They
were among the best
wrestlers in all the nine villages. The crowd wondered who
would throw the other this
year. Some said Okafo was the better man, others said he was
not the equal of Ikezue.

73. Last year neither of them had thrown the other even though the
judges had allowed the
contest to go on longer than was the custom. They had the same
style and one saw the
other's plans beforehand. It might happen again this year.
Dusk was already approaching when their contest began. The
drums went mad
and the crowds also. They surged forward as the two young men
danced into the circle.
The palm fronds were helpless in keeping them back.
Ikezue held out his right hand. Okafo seized it, and they closed
in. It was a fierce
contest. Ikezue strove to dig in his right heel behind Okafo so
as to pitch him backwards
in the clever ege style. But the one knew what the other was
thinking. The crowd had
surrounded and swallowed up the drummers, whose frantic
rhythm was no longer a mere
disembodied sound but the very heartbeat of the people.
The wrestlers were now almost still in each other's grip. The
muscles on their
arms and their thighs and on their backs stood out and twitched.
It looked like an equal

74. match. The two judges were already moving forward to separate
them when Ikezue, now
desperate, went down quickly on one knee in an attempt to fling
his man backwards over
his head. It was a sad miscalculation. Quick as the lightning of
Amadiora, Okafo raised
his right leg and swung it over his rival's head. The crowd burst
into a thunderous roar.
Okafo was swept off his feet by his supporters and carried home
shoulder high. They
sang his praise and the young women clapped their hands: "Who
will wrestle for our
village?
Okafo will wrestle for our village. Has he thrown a hundred
men?
He has thrown four hundred men. Has he thrown a hundred
Cats?
He has thrown four hundred Cats. Then send him word to fight
for us."
CHAPTER SEVEN

75. For three years Ikemefuna lived in Okonkwo's household and
the elders of Umuofia
seemed to have forgotten about him. He grew rapidly like a yam
tendril in the rainy
season, and was full of the sap of life. He had become wholly
absorbed into his new
family. He was like an elder brother to Nwoye, and from the
very first seemed to have
kindled a new fire in the younger boy. He made him feel grown-
up, and they no longer
spent the evenings in his mother's hut while she cooked, but
now sat with Okonkwo in his
obi, or watched him as he tapped his palm tree for the evening
wine. Nothing pleased
Nwoye now more than to be sent for by his mother or another of
his father's wives to do
one of those difficult and masculine tasks in the home, like
splitting wood, or pounding
food. On receiving such a message through a younger brother or
sister, Nwoye would
feign annoyance and grumble aloud about women and their
troubles.
Okonkwo was inwardly pleased at his son's development, and
he knew it was due

76. to Ikemefuna. He wanted Nwoye to grow into a tough young
man capable of ruling his
father's household when he was dead and gone to join the
ancestors.
He wanted him to be a prosperous man, having enough in his
barn to feed the
ancestors with regular sacrifices. And so he was always happy
when he heard him
grumbling about women. That showed that in time he would be
able to control his
women-folk. No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was
unable to rule his women
and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a
man. He was like the man
in the song who had ten and one wives and not enough soup for
his foo-foo.
So Okonkwo encouraged the boys to sit with him in his obi,
and he told them
stories of the land--masculine stories of violence and bloodshed.
Nwoye knew that it was
right to be masculine and to be violent, but somehow he still
preferred the stories that his
mother used to tell, and which she no doubt still told to her
younger children--stories of

77. the tortoise and his wily ways, and of the bird eneke-nti-oba
who challenged the whole
world to a wrestling contest and was finally thrown by the cat.
He remembered the story
she often told of the quarrel between Earth and Sky long ago,
and how Sky withheld rain
for seven years, until crops withered and the dead could not be
buried because the hoes
broke on the stony Earth. At last Vulture was sent to plead with
Sky, and to soften his
heart with a song of the suffering of the sons of men. Whenever
Nwoye's mother sang
this song he felt carried away to the distant scene in the sky
where Vulture, Earth's
emissary, sang for mercy. At last Sky was moved to pity, and he
gave to Vulture rain
wrapped in leaves of coco-yam. But as he flew home his long
talon pierced the leaves
and the rain fell as it had never fallen before. And so heavily
did it rain on Vulture that he
did not return to deliver his message but flew to a distant land,
from where he had espied

78. a fire. And when he got there he found it was a man making a
sacrifice. He warmed
himself in the fire and ate the entrails.
That was the kind of story that Nwoye loved. But he now knew
that they were for
foolish women and children, and he knew that his father wanted
him to be a man. And so
he feigned that he no longer cared for women's stories. And
when he did this he saw that
his father was pleased, and no longer rebuked him or beat him.
So Nwoye and Ikemefuna
would listen to Okonkwo's stories about tribal wars, or how,
years ago, he had stalked his
victim, overpowered him and obtained his first human head.
And as he told them of the
past they sat in darkness or the dim glow of logs, waiting for
the women to finish their
cooking. When they finished, each brought her bowl of foo-foo
and bowl of soup to her
husband. An oil lamp was lit and Okonkwo tasted from each
bowl, and then passed two
shares to Nwoye and Ikemefuna.
In this way the moons and the seasons passed. And then the
locusts came. It had

79. not happened for many a long year. The elders said locusts came
once in a generation,
reappeared every year for seven years and then disappeared for
another lifetime. They
went back to their caves in a distant land, where they were
guarded by a race of stunted
men. And then after another lifetime these men opened the
caves again and the locusts
came to Umuofia.
They came in the cold harmattan season after the harvests had
been gathered, and
ate up all the wild grass in the fields.
Okonkwo and the two boys were working on the red outer walls
of the compound.
This was one of the lighter tasks of the after-harvest season. A
new cover of thick palm
branches and palm leaves was set on the walls to protect them
from the next rainy season.
Okonkwo worked on the outside of the wall and the boys
worked from within. There
were little holes from one side to the other in the upper levels
of the wall, and through
these Okonkwo passed the rope, or tie-tie, to the boys and they

80. passed it round the
wooden stays and then back to him,- and in this way the cover
was strengthened on the
wall.
The women had gone to the bush to collect firewood, and the
little children to
visit their playmates in the neighbouring compounds. The
harmattan was in the air and
seemed to distill a hazy feeling of sleep on the world. Okonkwo
and the boys worked in
complete silence, which was only broken when a new palm
frond was lifted on to the
wall or when a busy hen moved dry leaves about in her
ceaseless search for food.
And then quite suddenly a shadow fell on the world, and the
sun seemed hidden
behind a thick cloud. Okonkwo looked up from his work and
wondered if it was going to
rain at such an unlikely time of the year. But almost
immediately a shout of joy broke out
in all directions, and Umuofia, which had dozed in the noon-day
haze, broke into life and
activity.

81. "Locusts are descending," was joyfully chanted everywhere,
and men, women and
children left their work or their play and ran into the open to
see the unfamiliar sight. The
locusts had not come for many, many years, and only the old
people had seen them
before.
At first, a fairly small swarm came. They were the harbingers
sent to survey the
land. And then appeared on the horizon a slowly-moving mass
like a boundless sheet of
black cloud drifting towards Umuofia. Soon it covered half the
sky, and the solid mass
was now broken by tiny eyes of light like shining star dust. It
was a tremendous sight, full
of power and beauty.
Everyone was now about, talking excitedly and praying that the
locusts should
camp in Umuofia for the night. For although locusts had not
visited Umuofia for many
years, everybody knew by instinct that they were very good to
eat. And at last the locusts

82. did descend. They settled on every tree and on every blade of
grass, they settled on the
roofs and covered the bare ground. Mighty tree branches broke
away under them, and the
whole country became the brown-earth colour of the vast,
hungry swarm.
Many people went out with baskets trying to catch them, but
the elders counselled
patience till nightfall. And they were right. The locusts settled
in the bushes for the night
and their wings became wet with dew. Then all Umuofia turned
out in spite of the cold
harmattan, and everyone filled his bags and pots with locusts.
The next morning they
were roasted in clay pots and then spread in the sun until they
became dry and brittle.
And for many days this rare food was eaten with solid palm-oil.
Okonkwo sat in his obi crunching happily with Ikemefuna and
Nwoye, and
drinking palm-wine copiously, when Ogbuefi Ezeudu came in.
Ezeudu was the oldest
man in this quarter of Umuofia. He had been a great and
fearless warrior in his time, and
was now accorded great respect in all the clan. He refused to

83. join in the meal, and asked
Okonkwo to have a word with him outside. And so they walked
out together, the old man
supporting himself with his stick. When they were out of
earshot, he said to Okonkwo:
"That boy calls you father. Do not bear a hand in his death."
Okonkwo was surprised, and
was about to say something when the old man continued: "Yes,
Umuofia has decided to
kill him. The Oracle of the Hills and the Caves has pronounced
it. They will take him
outside Umuofia as is the custom, and kill him there. But I want
you to have nothing to
do with it. He calls you his father."
The next day a group of elders from all the nine villages of
Umuofia came to
Okonkwo's house early in the morning, and before they began to
speak in low tones
Nwoye and Ikemefuna were sent out. They did not stay very
long, but when they went
away Okonkwo sat still for a very long time supporting his chin
in his palms. Later in the
day he called Ikemefuna and told him that he was to be taken
home the next day. Nwoye

84. overheard it and burst into tears, whereupon his father beat him
heavily. As for
Ikemefuna, he was at a loss. His own home had gradually
become very faint and distant.
He still missed his mother and his sister and would be very glad
to see them. But
somehow he knew he was not going to see them. He
remembered once when men had
talked in low tones with his father, and it seemed now as if it
was happening all over
again.
Later, Nwoye went to his mother's hut and told her that
Ikemefuna was going
home. She immediately dropped her pestle with which she was
grinding pepper, folded
her arms across her breast and sighed, "Poor child."
The next day, the men returned with a pot of wine. They were
all fully dressed as
if they were going to a big clan meeting or to pay a visit to a
neighbouring village. They
passed their cloths under the right arm-pit, and hung their
goatskin bags and sheathed
machetes over their left shoulders. Okonkwo got ready quickly

85. and the party set out with
Ikemefuna carrying the pot of wine. A deathly silence
descended on Okonkwo's
compound. Even the very little children seemed to know.
Throughout that day Nwoye sat
in his mother's hut and tears stood in his eyes.
At the beginning of their journey the men of Umuofia talked
and laughed about
the locusts, about their women, and about some effeminate men
who had refused to come
with them. But as they drew near to the outskirts of Umuofia
silence fell upon them too.
The sun rose slowly to the centre of the sky, and the dry, sandy
footway began to
throw up the heat that lay buried in it. Some birds chirruped in
the forests around. The
men trod dry leaves on the sand. All else was silent. Then from
the distance came the
faint beating of the ekwe. It rose and faded with the wind--a
peaceful dance from a
distant clan.
"It is an ozo dance," the men said among themselves. But no

86. one was sure where
it was coming from. Some said Ezimili, others Abame or
Aninta. They argued for a short
while and fell into silence again, and the elusive dance rose and
fell with the wind.
Somewhere a man was taking one of the titles of his clan, with
music and dancing and a
great feast.
The footway had now become a narrow line in the heart of the
forest. The short
trees and sparse undergrowth which surrounded the men's
village began to give way to
giant trees and climbers which perhaps had stood from the
beginning of things,
untouched by the axe and the bush-fire. The sun breaking
through their leaves and
branches threw a pattern of light and shade on the sandy
footway.
Ikemefuna heard a whisper close behind him and turned round
sharply. The man
who had whispered now called out aloud, urging the others to
hurry up.
"We still have a long way to go," he said. Then he and another
man went before

87. Ikemefuna and set a faster pace.
Thus the men of Umuofia pursued their way, armed with
sheathed machetes, and
Ikemefuna, carrying a pot of palm-wine on his head, walked in
their midst. Although he
had felt uneasy at first, he was not afraid now. Okonkwo walked
behind him. He could
hardly imagine that Okonkwo was not his real father. He had
never been fond of his real
father, and at the end of three years he had become very distant
indeed. But his mother
and his three-year-old sister... of course she would not be three
now, but six. Would he
recognise her now? She must have grown quite big. How his
mother would weep for joy,
and thank Okonkwo for having looked after him so well and for
bringing him back. She
would want to hear everything that had happened to him in all
these years. Could he
remember them all? He would tell her about Nwoye and his
mother, and about the
locusts... Then quite suddenly a thought came upon him. His
mother might be dead. He

88. tried in vain to force the thought out of his mind. Then he tried
to settle the matter the
way he used to settle such matters when he was a little boy. He
still remembered the
song: Eze elina, elina!
Sala
Eze ilikwa ya
Ikwaba akwa ogholi
Ebe Danda nechi eze Ebe
Uzuzu nete egwu Sala
He sang it in his mind, and walked to its beat. If the song
ended on his right foot,
his mother was alive. If it ended on his left, she was dead. No,
not dead, but ill. It ended
on the right. She was alive and well. He sang the song again,
and it ended on the left. But
the second time did not count. The first voice gets to Chukwu,
or God's house. That was a
favourite saying of children. Ikemefuna felt like a child once

89. more. It must be the thought
of going home to his mother.
One of the men behind him cleared his throat. Ikemefuna
looked back, and the
man growled at him to go on and not stand looking back. The
way he said it sent cold
fear down Ikemefuna's back. His hands trembled vaguely on the
black pot he carried.
Why had Okonkwo withdrawn to the rear? Ikemefuna felt his
legs melting under him.
And he was afraid to look back.
As the man who had cleared his throat drew up and raised his
machete, Okonkwo
looked away. He heard the blow. The pot fell and broke in the
sand. He heard Ikemefuna
cry, "My father, they have killed me!" as he ran towards him.
Dazed with fear, Okonkwo
drew his machete and cut him down. He was afraid of being
thought weak.
As soon as his father walked in, that night, Nwoye knew that
Ikemefuna had been
killed, and something seemed to give way inside him, like the
snapping of a tightened

90. bow. He did not cry. He just hung limp. He had had the same
kind of feeling not long
ago, during the last harvest season. Every child loved the
harvest season. Those who were
big enough to carry even a few yams in a tiny basket went with
grown-ups to the farm.
And if they could not help in digging up the yams, they could
gather firewood together
for roasting the ones that would be eaten there on the farm. This
roasted yam soaked in
red palm-oil and eaten in the open farm was sweeter than any
meal at home. It was after
such a day at the farm during the last harvest that Nwoye had
felt for the first time a
snapping inside him like the one he now felt. They were
returning home with baskets of
yams from a distant farm across the stream when they heard the
voice of an infant crying
in the thick forest. A sudden hush had fallen on the women, who
had been talking, and
they had quickened their steps. Nwoye had heard that twins
were put in earthenware pots
and thrown away in the forest, but he had never yet come across
them. A vague chill had

91. descended on him and his head had seemed to swell, like a
solitary walker at night who
passes an evil spirit on the way. Then something had given way
inside him. It descended
on him again, this feeling, when his father walked in that night
after killing Ikemefuna.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Okonkwo did not taste any food for two days after the death of
Ikemefuna. He drank
palm-wine from morning till night, and his eyes were red and
fierce like the eyes of a rat
when it was caught by the tail and dashed against the floor. He
called his son, Nwoye, to
sit with him in his obi. But the boy was afraid of him and
slipped out of the hut as soon as
he noticed him dozing.
He did not sleep at night. He tried not to think about
Ikemefuna,-but the more he
tried the more he thought about him. Once he got up from bed
and walked about his
compound. But he was so weak that his legs could hardly carry

92. him. He felt like a
drunken giant walking with the limbs of a mosquito. Now and
then a cold shiver
descended on his head and spread down his body.
On the third day he asked his second wife, Ekwefi, to roast
plantains for him. She
prepared it the way he liked--with slices of oil-bean and fish.
"You have not eaten for two days," said his daughter Ezinma
when she brought
the food to him. "So you must finish this." She sat down and
stretched her legs in front of
her. Okonkwo ate the food absent-mindedly. 'She should have
been a boy,' he thought as
he looked at his ten-year-old daughter. He passed her a piece of
fish.
"Go and bring me some cold water," he said. Ezinma rushed out
of the hut,
chewing the fish, and soon returned with a bowl of cool water
from the earthen pot in her
mother's hut.
Okonkwo took the bowl from her and gulped the water down.
He ate a few more

93. pieces of plantain and pushed the dish aside.
"Bring me my bag," he asked, and Ezinma brought his goatskin
bag from the far
end of the hut. He searched in it for his snuff-bottle. It was a
deep bag and took almost
the whole length of his arm. It contained other things apart from
his snuff-bottle. There
was a drinking horn in it, and also a drinking gourd, and they
knocked against each other
as he searched. When he brought out the snuff-bottle he tapped
it a few times against his
knee-cap before taking out some snuff on the palm of his left
hand. Then he remembered
that he had not taken out his snuff-spoon. He searched his bag
again and brought out a
small, flat, ivory spoon, with which he carried the brown snuff
to his nostrils.
Ezinma took the dish in one hand and the empty water bowl in
the other and went
back to her mother's hut. "She should have been a boy,"
Okonkwo said to himself again.
His mind went back to Ikemefuna and he shivered. If only he
could find some work to do

94. he would be able to forget. But it was the season of rest
between the harvest and the next
planting season. The only work that men did at this time was
covering the walls of their
compound with new palm fronds. And Okonkwo had already
done that. He had finished
it on the very day the locusts came, when he had worked on one
side of the wall and
Ikemefuna and Nwoye on the other.
"When did you become a shivering old woman," Okonkwo
asked himself, "you,
who are known in all the nine villages for your valour in war?
How can a man who has
killed five men in battle fall to pieces because he has added a
boy to their number?
Okonkwo, you have become a woman indeed."
He sprang to his feet, hung his goatskin bag on his shoulder
and went to visit his
friend, Obierika.
Obierika was sitting outside under the shade of an orange tree
making thatches
from leaves of the raffia-palm. He exchanged greetings with
Okonkwo and led the way

95. into his obi.
"I was coming over to see you as soon as I finished that
thatch," he said, rubbing
off the grains of sand that clung to his thighs.
"Is it well?" Okonkwo asked.
"Yes," replied Obierika. "My daughter's suitor is coming today
and I hope we will
clinch the matter of the bride-price. I want you to be there."
Just then Obierika's son, Maduka, came into the obi from
outside, greeted
Okonkwo and turned towards the compound, "Come and shake
hands with me,"
Okonkwo said to the lad. "Your wrestling the other day gave me
much happiness." The
boy smiled, shook hands with Okonkwo and went into the
compound.
"He will do great things," Okonkwo said. "If I had a son like
him I should be
happy. I am worried about Nwoye. A bowl of pounded yams can
throw him in a
wrestling match. His two younger brothers are more promising.
But I can tell you,

96. Obierika, that my children do not resemble me. Where are the
young suckers that will
grow when the old banana tree dies? If Ezinma had been a boy I
would have been
happier. She has the right spirit."
"You worry yourself for nothing," said Obierika. "The children
are still very
young."
"Nwoye is old enough to impregnate a woman. At his age I was
already fending
for myself. No, my friend, he is not too young. A chick that will
grow into a cock can be
spotted the very day it hatches. I have done my best to make
Nwoye grow into a man, but
there is too much of his mother in him."
"Too much of his grandfather," Obierika thought, but he did
not say it. The same
thought also came to Okonkwo's mind. But he had long learned
how to lay that ghost.
Whenever the thought of his father's weakness and failure
troubled him he expelled it by
thinking about his own strength and success. And so he did
now. His mind went to his

97. latest show of manliness.
"I cannot understand why you refused to come with us to kill
that boy," he asked
Obierika.
"Because I did not want to," Obierika replied sharply. "I had
something better to
do."
"You sound as if you question the authority and the decision of
the Oracle, who
said he should die."
"I do not. Why should I? But the Oracle did not ask me to carry
out its decision."
"But someone had to do it. If we were all afraid of blood, it
would not be done.
And what do you think the Oracle would do then?"
"You know very well, Okonkwo, that I am not afraid of blood
and if anyone tells
you that I am, he is telling a lie. And let me tell you one thing,
my friend. If I were you I
would have stayed at home. What you have done will not please
the Earth. It is the kind
of action for which the goddess wipes out whole families."

98. "The Earth cannot punish me for obeying her messenger,"
Okonkwo said. "A
child's fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which its
mother puts into its palm."
"That is true," Obierika agreed. "But if the Oracle said that my
son should be
killed I would neither dispute it nor be the one to do it."
They would have gone on arguing had Ofoedu not come in just
then. It was clear
from his twinkling eyes that he had important news. But it
would be impolite to rush him.
Obierika offered him a lobe of the kola nut he had broken with
Okonkwo. Ofoedu ate
slowly and talked about the locusts. When he finished his kola
nut he said: "The things
that happen these days are very strange."
"What has happened?" asked Okonkwo.
"Do you know Ogbuefi Ndulue?" Ofoedu asked.
"Ogbuefi Ndulue of Ire village," Okonkwo and Obierika said
together.
"He died this morning," said Ofoedu.
"That is not strange. He was the oldest man in Ire," said

99. Obierika.
"You are right," Ofoedu agreed. "But you ought to ask why the
drum has not
beaten to tell Umuofia of his death."
"Why?" asked Obierika and Okonkwo together.
"That is the strange part of it. You know his first wife who
walks with a stick?"
"Yes. She is called Ozoemena."
"That is so," said Ofoedu. "Ozoemena was, as you know, too
old to attend Ndulue
during his illness. His younger wives did that. When he died
this morning, one of these
women went to Ozoemena's hut and told her. She rose from her
mat, took her stick and
walked over to the obi. She knelt on her knees and hands at the
threshold and called her
husband, who was laid on a mat. 'Ogbuefi Ndulue,' she called,
three times, and went back
to her hut. When the youngest wife went to call her again to be
present at the washing of
the body, she found her lying on the mat, dead."

100. "That is very strange, indeed," said Okonkwo. "They will put
off Ndulue's funeral
until his wife has been buried."
"That is why the drum has not been beaten to tell Umuofia."
"It was always said that Ndulue and Ozoemena had one mind,"
said Obierika. "I
remember when I was a young boy there was a song about them.
He could not do
anything without telling her."
"I did not know that," said Okonkwo. "I thought he was a
strong man in his
youth."
"He was indeed," said Ofoedu.
Okonkwo shook his head doubtfully.
"He led Umuofia to war in those days," said Obierika.
Okonkwo was beginning to feel like his old self again. All that
he required was
something to occupy his mind. If he had killed Ikemefuna
during the busy planting
season or harvesting it would not have been so bad, his mind
would have been centred on
his work. Okonkwo was not a man of thought but of action. But

101. in absence of work,
talking was the next best.
Soon after Ofoedu left, Okonkwo took up his goatskin bag to
go.
"I must go home to tap my palm trees for the afternoon," he
said.
"Who taps your tall trees for you?" asked Obierika.
"Umezulike," replied Okonkwo.
"Sometimes I wish I had not taken the ozo title," said Obierika.
"It wounds my
heart to see these young men killing palm trees in the name of
tapping."
"It is so indeed," Okonkwo agreed. "But the law of the land
must be obeyed."
"I don't know how we got that law," said Obierika. "In many
other clans a man of
title is not forbidden to climb the palm tree. Here we say he
cannot climb the tall tree but
he can tap the short ones standing on the ground. It is like
Dimaragana, who would not
lend his knife for cutting up dogmeat because the dog was taboo
to him, but offered to
use his teeth."

102. "I think it is good that our clan holds the ozo title in high
esteem," said Okonkwo.
"In those other clans you speak of, ozo is so low that every
beggar takes it."
"I was only speaking in jest," said Obierika. "In Abame and
Aninta the title is
worth less than two cowries. Every man wears the thread of title
on his ankle, and does
not lose it even if he steals."
"They have indeed soiled the name of ozo," said Okonkwo as
he rose to go.
"It will not be very long now before my in-laws come," said
Obierika.
"I shall return very soon," said Okonkwo, looking at the
position of the sun.
There were seven men in Obierika's hut when Okonkwo
returned. The suitor was
a young man of about twenty-five, and with him were his father
and uncle. On Obierika's
side were his two elder brothers and Maduka, his sixteen-year-
old son.
"Ask Akueke's mother to send us some kola nuts," said

103. Obierika to his son.
Maduka vanished into the compound like lightning. The
conversation at once centred on
him, and everybody agreed that he was as sharp as a razor.
"I sometimes think he is too sharp," said Obierika, somewhat
indulgently. "He
hardly ever walks. He is always in a hurry. If you are sending
him on an errand he flies
away before he has heard half of the message."
"You were very much like that yourself," said his eldest
brother. "As our people
say, 'When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch
its mouth.' Maduka has
been watching your mouth."
As he was speaking the boy returned, followed by Akueke, his
half-sister,
carrying a wooden dish with three kola nuts and alligator
pepper. She gave the dish to her
father's eldest brother and then shook hands, very shyly, with
her suitor and his relatives.
She was about sixteen and just ripe for marriage. Her suitor and
his relatives surveyed her
young body with expert eyes as if to assure themselves that she

104. was beautiful and ripe.
She wore a coiffure which was done up into a crest in the
middle of the head.
Cam wood was rubbed lightly into her skin, and all over her
body were black patterns
drawn with uli. She wore a black necklace which hung down in
three coils just above her
full, succulent breasts. On her arms were red and yellow
bangles, and on her waist four or
five rows of jigida, or waist beads.
When she had shaken hands, or rather held out her hand to be
shaken, she
returned to her mother's hut to help with the cooking.
"Remove your jigida first," her mother warned as she moved
near the fireplace to
bring the pestle resting against the wall. "Every day I tell you
that jigida and fire are not
friends. But you will never hear. You grew your ears for
decoration, not for hearing. One
of these days your jigida will catch fire on your waist, and then
you will know."
Akueke moved to the other end of the hut and began to remove
the waist-beads. It